When Brother Simon retired from teaching in his mid-80s, he could have looked back with pride on a distinguished career. Instead he looked around the Texas Hill country, bought some art supplies, and started painting. At the age of 93, his curiosity still propels him — with a little help from a motorized cart that he rides around St. Edward’s University.

“If you stop in the arch [of a campus building], you can meet a number of students as they come roaring down the stairs,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. He has spent most of his life on campuses, beginning at the age of 14 when he entered the Sacred Heart Postulate in Watertown, Wisconsin. Known as the Juniorate for boys aspiring to become Holy Cross Brothers, the school at that time educated about 50 students. Brother Simon speaks with deep feeling about the men who watched over them, saying, “They were our teachers, our fathers, and our mothers.”

He went on to the novitiate at the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in English. During World War II, Brother Simon studied for his Ph.D. at Catholic University, then went back to Watertown to teach for a couple of years. Early on, his interest in art interlaced his love of literature, as he collected slides during his travels that he could use when teaching The Canterbury Tales and other classics.

In 1946 he came to St. Edward’s and, in his words, “began a totally different life.” He arrived at a historic moment: He and new president Brother Edmund Hunt were among the first Brothers to take over the administration of the university from Holy Cross priests. They needed to prepare — fast — for veterans who wanted to attend college on the GI Bill. “I was one of the Brothers who was handy,” he remembers, “so I taught many courses, held many offices [including Dean of Studies and Vice President — Director of Student Activities], and was busy all the time.”

His renown as a literature teacher grew along with the campus, and over the years he developed a fascination with science fiction. If his students expected a typical reading list, they were in for a surprise. “We began by reading Thomas More’s Utopia,” recalls Brother Simon, although he admits that they also studied genre greats like Robert A. Heinlein. “We read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which is about relocating prisoners to the moon. The students liked that,” he says.

Another favorite course, co-taught with Brother Stephen Walsh, was called Breaking the Mold: Laboratory and the Creative Process. His fascination with science, piqued but never satisfied at Notre Dame, inspired him to launch that course with The Double Helix, James D. Watson’s gripping account of the race to discover the structure of DNA.

He gleefully recalls a student project in that class. “Four kids built a volcano, showing the changes in terrain. They also supplied a propellant, but their demonstration didnít take into account all the parameters!” Brother Simon chuckles as he describes the fire alarm going off, smoke pouring from the room, and his attempts to explain the situation as people rushed to the scene.

Along with such dramatic memories, Brother Simon accumulated several honors. A mayoral proclamation in 1957 established “Brother Simon Scribner Day,” and in 1968 the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation recognized him for teaching excellence. In 1970, he was selected to appear in Outstanding Educators of America. He made a vivid impression, too, on many alumni. One, writing in the university magazine, remembered sitting up until 1 a.m. discussing Great Books in the course monitored by Brother Simon and Brother Edmund Hunt, calling them both “great men.”

Today, the former literature professor speaks like a poet about his more recent love of painting and the natural beauty that thrills him.

“When I came to Texas, I left a dark, cold, gray world and entered a sunny, warm one,” he says, going on to talk about his weekly drives into the Texas Hill country with Brother Edwin Reggio, where “golden grasses border the roads, and it creates a grand effect. That is why I spend time drawing and painting — I am driven by something in the nature around me, and I begin to see more light in things.” When a medical setback kept him sequestered at Brother Vincent Pieau Residence, a fellow Brother took digital photographs and uploaded them on Brother Simon’s television set, so he could sketch from the images and continue painting.

Discerning his vocation, as his describes it, was also a creative act. “The decision enfolds everything,” he says slowly, “as though you have something inside you that spreads around and illuminates everything.” His, he says, is “built into the fabric of the place.” The power to transform — a book into a lesson, a landscape into a painting, a young man into a Brother — shines through his life story. Yet his advice to someone considering a vocation is both passionate and practical.

“Have work you really want to do,” he says. “If you’re going to be a teacher, go all the way. If you’re interested in art, spend the rest of your life cultivating art in students. You have religious life to back you up, and it will help you cultivate the life you seek.”